KJ Parker
Orbit (orbitbooks.net)
978-1-84149-926-0
As a sweeping generalisation, KJ Parker’s novels are intelligent, funny, brutal, thrilling and inaccessible. Parker’s gift – one of them, at least – is turning mundane, everyday activities into extended, perfect metaphors for life and human nature; genius when you read it, but tough to sell to friends or internet readerships. As you gushingly describe a Parker novel, you’re in danger of being tagged as the sort of person who finds logistics fun.
Sharps is a departure from that, at least on the surface. The story of a Scherian fencing team sent to neighbouring Permia at the end of a decades-long war between the two nations, it’s got politics, intrigue and sword-fighting. It’s got a hook you can safely describe at parties!
Echoing the ping-pong diplomacy between the US and China in the seventies, the tour is a diplomatic tool designed to help secure the peace … or so the fencers are told. But if that’s the case, why send… them?
A traumatised veteran on the edge of snapping; an accidental murderer given the choice of this or the rope; the abrasive daughter of minor nobility; and the spare son of the general who drowned an entire Permian city. Four unlikely diplomats, managed by a retired former champion turned businessman.
None of them are entirely here by choice. Are they a sacrifice, sent to die and reignite the conflict? Or is one of their party responsible for the string of assassinations suddenly thinning the ranks of Permia’s rulers? Where does their slinky, suspicious political minder keep slipping off to whenever bad things happen? And just what the hell is actually going on?
Follow the money could be this novel’s guiding tenet. Scheria’s in hock to the financial institutions of the Western Empire; Permia’s hard-mined silver – while it lasted – went to hiring mercenary troops from the Eastern Empire and the ‘barbarian’ tribes of the Aram Chantat. With larger powers at play in the petty squabbles of two relatively insignificant countries, it’s hard not to see a of the Korean conflict’s cold-war proxying in Permia and Scheria.
There are echoes of more modern troubles, too, from the economic imbalances of the wealthy vs the other 99% through Permia’s slow-burning Arab Spring-style popular uprising and on to the political dissatisfaction of western youth. There’s an excerpt from a book – a comically dry treatise on political theory one of the fencers ends up reading, to stave off boredom on the long coach journey – which seems particularly telling:
The institution we commonly refer to as democracy would, properly speaking, be more aptly termed an elective, or even in many cases a sortative, oligarchy, where the democratic element consists merely of the selection, often by random, perverse or otherwise unsound procedures, of the membership of the personnel of the ruling elite.
pp.116-117
But generally, this is a novel fascinated by the complexities of violence, both political and personal – and the effects it has on the wielders of that power. In fencing Parker’s once again found the perfect metaphor, where the civilised niceties of sport fencing – the etiquette, the rules, the blunted weapons – are like a silk handkerchief to hide a bloodstain.
When they get to Permia, the Scherian team are horrified to find that the Permians fence with sharps, not blunted foils – and one of the team will be fencing messer. Little more than a big curved knife, messer has no useful guards or wards – it’s a weapon of aggression and all-out attack. It’s fencing stripped of all its pretences. ‘Here they fight with messers. God help them’ is a quote from the fifteenth-century German swordmaster Hans Talhoffer, and it’s dropped again and again into the narrative of Sharps like some kind of catechism.
In the end, it comes down to what you’re willing to do. As one of the fencers says, “at least half the story’s always the reason why you do something. You can give me a whole string of things that normally you’d say were the most appalling crimes, and then I’ll give you cases where they’re not only justified, they’re absolutely the right thing to do.” (p.185)
Perspective is important in Sharps, how the place you’re standing affects your whole outlook. Again fencing proves itself an apt metaphor, as the Scherians’ style of stepping out of line – bringing a second dimension to a linear, shuffle-back-and-forth duel – dismays the Permians in an early match. Cultural differences, and so on.
But this segues easily into more substantive divisions: me and him, us and them. The other. Suidas, the bitter, PTSDed veteran, loathes the Permians (and the mercenary Imperials and Aram Chantat, and pretty much everyone really) but ironically understands them better than anyone else in the coach.
The Aram Chantat might drink from skull cups, but they’re faintly horrified that the Permians and Scherians would wave swords at each other for fun. Time and time again Parker highlights the dividing lines of culture, class and skin colour, before cheerfully turning them upside down and highlighting the characters’ damning, inescapable preconceptions:
They talked about sizing up your opponent. That made him think of looking at girls, the way he used to. Turn people into objects and you can do any damn thing to them.
p.86
Speaking of girls, however, the lone woman among the fencers, Iseutz, marks a welcome answer to a criticism often levelled at Parker – that the author’s female characters tend to be shrewish, inscrutable background furniture rather than active participants in the story.
Iseutz still has a touch of the shrew, but she’s fiery and funny and gets as much agency as any of the other fencers do – which admittedly isn’t much, but at least she’s an equal player here rather than inconsequential set dressing. It’s nice to see what Parker can do with a female character, and I hope we’ll see more like Iseutz in novels to come.
You’ll note I said funny a little way back. Did I mention already that Parker’s novels were funny? Sharps is absolutely no exception, dry and delightful, and populated by intelligent, witty characters with a tendency to savage each other without mercy. It’s hard to pull any particular quote out as overtly funny, but Parker’s sustained, almost aggressive deadpan just seems to build and build:
“It means I don’t know,” the doctor repeated. “I happen to be one of the three best doctors in Scheria, but if medical science is geography, then mankind as a species has a map with three towns marked on it and a lot of blank space with drawings of sea serpents. I think it’s your heart, but there’s about a dozen other things it could be, half of which are trivial and the rest almost certainly fatal. How old did you say you are?”
“Seventy-two.”
“The doctor nodded. “If you’ve got any money saved up, I’d spend it.”
“I’ve taken a vow of poverty.”
“That’s all right, then.”
p.194
At its best, the depth of the humour approaches a sublime kind of farce – particularly where each of the characters is desperately trying to keep above water and figure out what’s going on. Only the reader, by benefit of seeing the goings-on from a variety of different angles, is privileged enough to have all the pieces – but they’re jumbled up good and proper.
Sharps is Parker’s most complex work so far – no small feat – and it never panders to its audience. All the information is there, you just need to be able to extract it from what’s essentially a story of five people going crazy from claustrophobia on a long coach journey. Needless to say, this is a novel which rewards re-reading.
Because for all its epic, fate-of-nations sweep, Sharps is primarily a character study. The fencing team are fuck-ups and failures, but they’re fascinating ones – and none of them stupid. Which means they spend half their time squinting at each other suspiciously, and the other half making mistakes they know they’re making even as they make them.
The first imperative of war, his father always insisted, was to define victory; to work out exactly what you wanted to achieve. … His father was, of course, notoriously bad at chess. He always lost when playing against promising junior officers or enemy generals. But of course, in losing, he gained valuable information about their strengths, whereas if he won, all he’d have demonstrated was that he was more clever than them, which he knew already.
p.125
As Parker says in an interview over at pornokitsch, ‘Smart characters are more fun. You can do more with them, and to them. They tend to be articulate enough to say stuff that needs saying (so I don’t have to); they’ve got the ingenuity and resourcefulness to get things done; they get themselves into better and deeper scrapes.’
The scrapes here are pretty deep, and where they’re not entirely character-driven then the foibles of the characters involved certainly don’t help. It’s as though the fencers are on a kind of treadmill, where the more they try to change their essential natures the faster they’re drawn back to them.
Fate casts a long shadow over most of Parker’s novels, but I’ve never sensed it looming so strongly as in Sharps. Every swordfight feels as though it has horrendous weight – and this is a novel about a fencing tour, after all, so there are plenty of them, each impeccably accurate in the specifics and thrillingly described.
Because this is also a novel about history – its inescapability and, contradictorily, its mutability. As one of the fencers puts it:
A memory was property, after all. When there were no other witnesses to claim title to it, the memory belonged to you. It was no crime to bend it a little, to dull the edges, put a button on the point so it was no longer sharp. Only a fool would carry an unsheathed knife in his pocket.
p.107
This is history being written by the winners, how posterity transforms folly into heroism and buries any inconvenient fact that don’t fit neatly into the conquering narrative. A brutal aside in the closing pages emphasises just how insignificant all of this is, in the long run; how the inexorable passage of time wears down even the most dramatic of personal stories into barely a footnote on the annals of history.
If there’s any justice, KJ Parker will be more than just a footnote in the annals of fantasy. But you can probably do something about that. So out you go. Buy Sharps.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
Showing posts with label K. J. Parker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label K. J. Parker. Show all posts
Thursday, 17 October 2013
Tuesday, 12 July 2011
The Folding Knife
K J Parker
Orbit (orbitbooks.net)
978-1-84149-512-5
If K J Parker were a film director, you’d call them an auteur. Critics being an argumentative lot, there’s little in the way of consensus on the meaning of the word, but the general gist is that all of the director’s works share some common tendency, whether it be of theme, of style, or of something less easily defined.
So with Parker. From early works to The Folding Knife, the author has presented a series of variations on the same theme – and what’s kept these novels from ever feeling repetitive isn’t only the superb quality and idiosyncratic style of the writing, but the sheer difficulty of answering the questions it poses – or even nailing down the precise nature of said questions. Parker is a student of the banality of evil, fascinated by its range and complexity.
Before I dive off into cod philosophy and a comparative reading of the author’s whole back catalogue, however, there’s a review to be getting on with. So, The Folding Knife.
Bleak. Funny. Troubling.
That’s clearly not enough, but within those three words can be found the whole of the novel. The world inhabited by Parker’s characters is an extraordinarily dark one – you’d call it nihilistic, if not for the subtle, unshakeable sense that the universe is not so much indifferent to the sufferings of human beings as actively hostile to their interests. No good deed goes unpunished; no error comes without its consequences. This is a world where every life describes a tragedy.
The life in question here is that of Bassianus Severus, First Citizen of the Vesani Republic and financier extraordinaire. The tragedy is watching Basso face all manner of crises, whether personal, professional or political, and generally overcome. Where’s the tragedy in that, do I hear you ask? But The Folding Knife is all about the journey, not the destination; whether a lifetime of public service – which just as an aside happens to make one absurdly rich – is enough to offset a single act of evil. ‘In a lifetime of crucial decisions’, the back-cover blurb tells us, Basso has ‘only ever made one mistake’. But it’s a mistake which haunts him, which taints every success, and which he’s spent everything he is trying to make up for.
Heavy stuff. But balanced against the novel’s weighty theme and vindictive universe is Parker’s trademark style. Without the writing’s utter lack of pomposity, its blissful lightness of touch and fierce wit, the novel would be just about unreadable. Instead we’re privy to Basso’s internal processes, or at least a slice of them somewhere between a Woolfian stream-of-consciousness and the deliberate opacity of surface movements; in lesser hands this could prove maddeningly incomprehensible, but Parker’s control of voice is utterly assured.
“We’ll do our best,” Festo said.
“Of course you will,” he replied, and something prompted him to add, “and if you make a good job of it, I’ll let you go to Badava for the summer. Well? Is that a good deal?”
They were grinning at him, and he thought: they assume I’d planned that all along, the reward, the incentive. It’s how a good father would have structured it; first the bluster and the stern eye, then the special treat, whipped out of the sack at the end. But Badava was just an afterthought, because I was feeling guilty.
(p.146)
Basso is a man who lies to everyone, even (especially?) himself; even when he’s telling the truth, he’s lying as to why. The ambiguity this builds is refreshing, and rare; the only way to even come close to understanding what drives him is to view his actions in terms of the bigger picture. And the way in which Parker handles dramatic scale, smoothly changing gear between personal tragedy and geopolitical intrigue, is a pleasure in itself.
Basso himself would say that there’s little difference between the two. In his early training in financial sleight of hand, Basso learns how something as apparently simple as a shortage of barrel staves at the perfect moment can bring about the capitulation of a mighty empire. While he proves adept at applying this mastery of connectivity – of minimal action for maximum gain – for political and business success, he seems incapable of applying the same logic to his own life. And all the while he builds a house of cards, as if unsure himself how the whole thing doesn’t just tumble down around him…
So: the potential for utter social, political and economic ruin, brought about by the manipulations of devious bankers? The novel’s rather pointed comment on the real world financial crisis is unusually broad for Parker, but no less pertinent for its lack of subtlety. For all Basso’s cleverness, his successes effectively stem from luck – something he accepts but doesn’t seem to accommodate: “I’ve always got the impression luck gets stronger with use, like a muscle” (p.119), he tells his old teacher. When things go wrong, though, he simply has no idea what to do – as demonstrated in the peculiar moment when the normally assured, commanding Basso becomes utterly passive in the face of terrible news, while a nameless military courier lays out the various bad-case scenarios before the floundering First Citizen and guides him to the least-appalling conclusion (pp.434-438). What at first seems wildly out-of-character is simply the reaction of a man ill-equipped to deal with unpleasant surprises.
With the exception of The Company, Parker’s novels tend to focus almost exclusively on a single central figure, and The Folding Knife continues the usual trend. This is the Basso show, a one-man tour de force which inevitably leaves the rest of the cast little room to manoeuvre. But while the supporting cast have little in the way of page time, Parker works wonders with the little they’re granted and sketches out a handful of well-rounded characters with admirable economy. Where the characterisation comes across a little sparse, as with Basso’s two sons, you get the impression this is less a flaw than a deliberate decision. To Basso the boys are of no interest; when they figure in the novel it’s inevitably as either a distraction or an afterthought, and their lack of distinctiveness to the reader is simply a reflection of Basso’s overwhelming indifference.
A similar lack of interest is generated in The Folding Knife’s few female characters, but it’s one less easily rationalised. The novel’s women are ciphers, usually referred to as ‘she’ without even a name to place them in the scene; it’s possible that Parker judged their rarity made something so trifling as a name redundant, but the lack leaves a nasty taste in the mouth when responsibility for the majority of the novel’s many ills can be laid at their feet. While the author’s gender has never been made public – hopefully explaining the convoluted sentence-mangling to which I’ve had to resort in order to avoid personal pronouns during the course of this review – The Folding Knife bears the fingerprints of what seems at best an uncomfortable distain for the worth and motivations of its female characters.
Perhaps it seems unfair to celebrate the novel’s ambiguity with regard to Basso and his fellow men, while complaining about the same trait with regard to the women. There’s a critical difference of tone, however: Basso’s inscrutability feels like the result of carefully sculpted characterisation; that of his sister and wives feels more like authorial indifference.
Uncertain gender politics aside, The Folding Knife is another solid effort from Parker. If it’s not up to the quality of, say, The Company, that’s scant criticism. Fiction with this depth of intelligence is a rarity in any genre, and if nothing else the novel deserves some kind of medal for making the details of budget-balancing and deal-making so utterly fascinating.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
Orbit (orbitbooks.net)
978-1-84149-512-5
If K J Parker were a film director, you’d call them an auteur. Critics being an argumentative lot, there’s little in the way of consensus on the meaning of the word, but the general gist is that all of the director’s works share some common tendency, whether it be of theme, of style, or of something less easily defined.
So with Parker. From early works to The Folding Knife, the author has presented a series of variations on the same theme – and what’s kept these novels from ever feeling repetitive isn’t only the superb quality and idiosyncratic style of the writing, but the sheer difficulty of answering the questions it poses – or even nailing down the precise nature of said questions. Parker is a student of the banality of evil, fascinated by its range and complexity.
Before I dive off into cod philosophy and a comparative reading of the author’s whole back catalogue, however, there’s a review to be getting on with. So, The Folding Knife.
Bleak. Funny. Troubling.
That’s clearly not enough, but within those three words can be found the whole of the novel. The world inhabited by Parker’s characters is an extraordinarily dark one – you’d call it nihilistic, if not for the subtle, unshakeable sense that the universe is not so much indifferent to the sufferings of human beings as actively hostile to their interests. No good deed goes unpunished; no error comes without its consequences. This is a world where every life describes a tragedy.
The life in question here is that of Bassianus Severus, First Citizen of the Vesani Republic and financier extraordinaire. The tragedy is watching Basso face all manner of crises, whether personal, professional or political, and generally overcome. Where’s the tragedy in that, do I hear you ask? But The Folding Knife is all about the journey, not the destination; whether a lifetime of public service – which just as an aside happens to make one absurdly rich – is enough to offset a single act of evil. ‘In a lifetime of crucial decisions’, the back-cover blurb tells us, Basso has ‘only ever made one mistake’. But it’s a mistake which haunts him, which taints every success, and which he’s spent everything he is trying to make up for.
Heavy stuff. But balanced against the novel’s weighty theme and vindictive universe is Parker’s trademark style. Without the writing’s utter lack of pomposity, its blissful lightness of touch and fierce wit, the novel would be just about unreadable. Instead we’re privy to Basso’s internal processes, or at least a slice of them somewhere between a Woolfian stream-of-consciousness and the deliberate opacity of surface movements; in lesser hands this could prove maddeningly incomprehensible, but Parker’s control of voice is utterly assured.
“We’ll do our best,” Festo said.
“Of course you will,” he replied, and something prompted him to add, “and if you make a good job of it, I’ll let you go to Badava for the summer. Well? Is that a good deal?”
They were grinning at him, and he thought: they assume I’d planned that all along, the reward, the incentive. It’s how a good father would have structured it; first the bluster and the stern eye, then the special treat, whipped out of the sack at the end. But Badava was just an afterthought, because I was feeling guilty.
(p.146)
Basso is a man who lies to everyone, even (especially?) himself; even when he’s telling the truth, he’s lying as to why. The ambiguity this builds is refreshing, and rare; the only way to even come close to understanding what drives him is to view his actions in terms of the bigger picture. And the way in which Parker handles dramatic scale, smoothly changing gear between personal tragedy and geopolitical intrigue, is a pleasure in itself.
Basso himself would say that there’s little difference between the two. In his early training in financial sleight of hand, Basso learns how something as apparently simple as a shortage of barrel staves at the perfect moment can bring about the capitulation of a mighty empire. While he proves adept at applying this mastery of connectivity – of minimal action for maximum gain – for political and business success, he seems incapable of applying the same logic to his own life. And all the while he builds a house of cards, as if unsure himself how the whole thing doesn’t just tumble down around him…
So: the potential for utter social, political and economic ruin, brought about by the manipulations of devious bankers? The novel’s rather pointed comment on the real world financial crisis is unusually broad for Parker, but no less pertinent for its lack of subtlety. For all Basso’s cleverness, his successes effectively stem from luck – something he accepts but doesn’t seem to accommodate: “I’ve always got the impression luck gets stronger with use, like a muscle” (p.119), he tells his old teacher. When things go wrong, though, he simply has no idea what to do – as demonstrated in the peculiar moment when the normally assured, commanding Basso becomes utterly passive in the face of terrible news, while a nameless military courier lays out the various bad-case scenarios before the floundering First Citizen and guides him to the least-appalling conclusion (pp.434-438). What at first seems wildly out-of-character is simply the reaction of a man ill-equipped to deal with unpleasant surprises.
With the exception of The Company, Parker’s novels tend to focus almost exclusively on a single central figure, and The Folding Knife continues the usual trend. This is the Basso show, a one-man tour de force which inevitably leaves the rest of the cast little room to manoeuvre. But while the supporting cast have little in the way of page time, Parker works wonders with the little they’re granted and sketches out a handful of well-rounded characters with admirable economy. Where the characterisation comes across a little sparse, as with Basso’s two sons, you get the impression this is less a flaw than a deliberate decision. To Basso the boys are of no interest; when they figure in the novel it’s inevitably as either a distraction or an afterthought, and their lack of distinctiveness to the reader is simply a reflection of Basso’s overwhelming indifference.
A similar lack of interest is generated in The Folding Knife’s few female characters, but it’s one less easily rationalised. The novel’s women are ciphers, usually referred to as ‘she’ without even a name to place them in the scene; it’s possible that Parker judged their rarity made something so trifling as a name redundant, but the lack leaves a nasty taste in the mouth when responsibility for the majority of the novel’s many ills can be laid at their feet. While the author’s gender has never been made public – hopefully explaining the convoluted sentence-mangling to which I’ve had to resort in order to avoid personal pronouns during the course of this review – The Folding Knife bears the fingerprints of what seems at best an uncomfortable distain for the worth and motivations of its female characters.
Perhaps it seems unfair to celebrate the novel’s ambiguity with regard to Basso and his fellow men, while complaining about the same trait with regard to the women. There’s a critical difference of tone, however: Basso’s inscrutability feels like the result of carefully sculpted characterisation; that of his sister and wives feels more like authorial indifference.
Uncertain gender politics aside, The Folding Knife is another solid effort from Parker. If it’s not up to the quality of, say, The Company, that’s scant criticism. Fiction with this depth of intelligence is a rarity in any genre, and if nothing else the novel deserves some kind of medal for making the details of budget-balancing and deal-making so utterly fascinating.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
Sunday, 2 May 2010
The Company
K. J. Parker
Orbit (www.orbitbooks.net)
978-1-84149-510-1
The inside of K. J. Parker’s head must be a lovely place, filled with sweetness, warmth and fuzzy bunnies. I assume as such, because it seems that any bad thought which might arise there is swiftly plucked out and pinned to the page, where it lays down dark and wizened roots which suck all the goodness out of its surroundings. So it is we’ve been presented with such bleak horrors as a man who constructs a bow from the bones and tendons of his nephew, a wanderer who brings plague following in his wake, and an engineer who designs a war to depopulate entire continents for the sole purpose of being reunited with his wife and child.
So when I say that The Company is Parker’s bleakest and most horrific work yet, you know I’m not messing about. It may also be her greatest, but there’s no doubt at all that it’s her most inaccessible. Part of what sets it apart is that for the first time Parker’s focus is not solely on a single character, but on the five surviving men of A company, living legends who survived not only because of their lethal competence but because, it sometimes seems, they simply don’t know how to die.
But they don’t know how to live, either; the back-cover subtitle of The Company reads ‘the war is never over’, and for these men there is no greater truth. Their attitude pervades the entire book, as every encounter, every scene is couched in military terminology and the metaphors of the battlefield - no matter how ill-fitting, or inappropriate, or banal.
‘After the visitor had left, she asked him, “Who was that?”
Inevitably. He marshalled his face and mustered his words. “Old army friend of mine,” he said, picking up an empty cup and taking it over to the washstand. It was a valiant effort but tactically unsound; he never washed up dirty crockery.’ (p.13)
Parker’s great strength as a writer has always been the way in which she layers metaphor over her plots, blending form and function with a singularity of purpose which makes her novels almost transcendental, and again she shows herself a master of the unorthodox point of view. Yet in The Company the multiplicity of protagonists blur and blend into one in a way which reduces them to components of the greater whole, curiously interchangeable. Is it Aidi or Alces who ran a fencing school after the war, Muri or Kudei who ended up working in the tannery among the filth and stench? Is that the point – that these men whose only achievement is destruction are somehow one? That all they are is weapons, stamped out on the production line? Only Kunessin, who first proposes that the group abandon their hollow post-war existences and colonise an uninhabited island somewhere off the coast, truly stands out to any extent – and that only because we are invited early on to share his secrets, to become complicit in the systematic betrayal of his fellow veterans.
Normally such blurred characterisation would make it difficult to identify with and sympathise with a novel’s characters, but that isn’t a problem here – I suspect because it’s not intended we should sympathise with them at all. Parker has always taken her reader deep inside the heads of her characters, but it’s a one-sided sort of focalisation in which only the grubbier kind of insights float to the surface. There is no happiness, no empathy, none of the pleasure that comes of a job well done. Only misunderstanding and incomprehension, stripping the leaves from the trees and the colour from the sky and earth. Parker’s world is a cold, grey, dead one, where trust and human kindness are alien concepts. The lyrical abstractions with which she paints her scene prevent the reader from forming a firm image of the world, just as it keeps the reader from forming a firm image of the characters which inhabit it. This deeply stylised form holds the reader at a distance from the world inside the novel, but that sometimes seems to be the very point. By painting in abstract Parker forces the reader’s imagination into active engagement with the novel out of sheer desperation, and the world we build in our heads is as much ours as it is hers – making us, again, wholly complicit in its brutality. Barthes would have been thrilled to see the wall between reader and author so eroded.
Yet there’s a grim humour to Parker’s writing, and the way even the most competent of characters seem to never set foot inside their comfort zone but instead go through life in a state of mild confusion might even have been endearing if it weren’t for the novel’s uncompromising nihilism. They aren’t bad people, as such, but the damage they inflict on one another through sheer lack of empathy is horrific. Again, the critical point is that those point-of-view characters who do show themselves competent are never shared with us while they do so – they are only looked upon by others, and by association by the reader, as if looking at alien and unknowable gods. Yet when the point of view switches to that character and he looks upon the previous focal point with the same unease at their effortless competence, the logic is inescapable: nobody knows anything. Skill, intelligence, wit: all are meaningless in the face of a hostile universe.
The flawed assumption that someone, somewhere must know what’s going on is a theme The Company shares with that other great novel of wartime anarchy, Catch-22. But where Joseph Heller approaches his subject in prose dancing lightly through a hail of absurdities, Parker is hauling her wounded theme through the cloying mud of no-man’s land. Shit happens, and traditional concepts of narrative would tell us it has to happen for a reason – we need to complete the circle, feel a sense of closure. But sometimes shit just… happens. There’s no hope, no sense of justice or closure. Postmodern it may be, but the utter pointlessness of The Company’s violence seems as close as art’s ever likely to get to holding a mirror up to life. That war is hell is the oldest cliché of military fiction, but that doesn’t rob it of its truth – and in The Company it’s a hell which will last for ever and ever, world without end, amen. Don’t expect to come up smiling; be thankful if you come up at all.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
Orbit (www.orbitbooks.net)
978-1-84149-510-1
The inside of K. J. Parker’s head must be a lovely place, filled with sweetness, warmth and fuzzy bunnies. I assume as such, because it seems that any bad thought which might arise there is swiftly plucked out and pinned to the page, where it lays down dark and wizened roots which suck all the goodness out of its surroundings. So it is we’ve been presented with such bleak horrors as a man who constructs a bow from the bones and tendons of his nephew, a wanderer who brings plague following in his wake, and an engineer who designs a war to depopulate entire continents for the sole purpose of being reunited with his wife and child.
So when I say that The Company is Parker’s bleakest and most horrific work yet, you know I’m not messing about. It may also be her greatest, but there’s no doubt at all that it’s her most inaccessible. Part of what sets it apart is that for the first time Parker’s focus is not solely on a single character, but on the five surviving men of A company, living legends who survived not only because of their lethal competence but because, it sometimes seems, they simply don’t know how to die.
But they don’t know how to live, either; the back-cover subtitle of The Company reads ‘the war is never over’, and for these men there is no greater truth. Their attitude pervades the entire book, as every encounter, every scene is couched in military terminology and the metaphors of the battlefield - no matter how ill-fitting, or inappropriate, or banal.
‘After the visitor had left, she asked him, “Who was that?”
Inevitably. He marshalled his face and mustered his words. “Old army friend of mine,” he said, picking up an empty cup and taking it over to the washstand. It was a valiant effort but tactically unsound; he never washed up dirty crockery.’ (p.13)
Parker’s great strength as a writer has always been the way in which she layers metaphor over her plots, blending form and function with a singularity of purpose which makes her novels almost transcendental, and again she shows herself a master of the unorthodox point of view. Yet in The Company the multiplicity of protagonists blur and blend into one in a way which reduces them to components of the greater whole, curiously interchangeable. Is it Aidi or Alces who ran a fencing school after the war, Muri or Kudei who ended up working in the tannery among the filth and stench? Is that the point – that these men whose only achievement is destruction are somehow one? That all they are is weapons, stamped out on the production line? Only Kunessin, who first proposes that the group abandon their hollow post-war existences and colonise an uninhabited island somewhere off the coast, truly stands out to any extent – and that only because we are invited early on to share his secrets, to become complicit in the systematic betrayal of his fellow veterans.
Normally such blurred characterisation would make it difficult to identify with and sympathise with a novel’s characters, but that isn’t a problem here – I suspect because it’s not intended we should sympathise with them at all. Parker has always taken her reader deep inside the heads of her characters, but it’s a one-sided sort of focalisation in which only the grubbier kind of insights float to the surface. There is no happiness, no empathy, none of the pleasure that comes of a job well done. Only misunderstanding and incomprehension, stripping the leaves from the trees and the colour from the sky and earth. Parker’s world is a cold, grey, dead one, where trust and human kindness are alien concepts. The lyrical abstractions with which she paints her scene prevent the reader from forming a firm image of the world, just as it keeps the reader from forming a firm image of the characters which inhabit it. This deeply stylised form holds the reader at a distance from the world inside the novel, but that sometimes seems to be the very point. By painting in abstract Parker forces the reader’s imagination into active engagement with the novel out of sheer desperation, and the world we build in our heads is as much ours as it is hers – making us, again, wholly complicit in its brutality. Barthes would have been thrilled to see the wall between reader and author so eroded.
Yet there’s a grim humour to Parker’s writing, and the way even the most competent of characters seem to never set foot inside their comfort zone but instead go through life in a state of mild confusion might even have been endearing if it weren’t for the novel’s uncompromising nihilism. They aren’t bad people, as such, but the damage they inflict on one another through sheer lack of empathy is horrific. Again, the critical point is that those point-of-view characters who do show themselves competent are never shared with us while they do so – they are only looked upon by others, and by association by the reader, as if looking at alien and unknowable gods. Yet when the point of view switches to that character and he looks upon the previous focal point with the same unease at their effortless competence, the logic is inescapable: nobody knows anything. Skill, intelligence, wit: all are meaningless in the face of a hostile universe.
The flawed assumption that someone, somewhere must know what’s going on is a theme The Company shares with that other great novel of wartime anarchy, Catch-22. But where Joseph Heller approaches his subject in prose dancing lightly through a hail of absurdities, Parker is hauling her wounded theme through the cloying mud of no-man’s land. Shit happens, and traditional concepts of narrative would tell us it has to happen for a reason – we need to complete the circle, feel a sense of closure. But sometimes shit just… happens. There’s no hope, no sense of justice or closure. Postmodern it may be, but the utter pointlessness of The Company’s violence seems as close as art’s ever likely to get to holding a mirror up to life. That war is hell is the oldest cliché of military fiction, but that doesn’t rob it of its truth – and in The Company it’s a hell which will last for ever and ever, world without end, amen. Don’t expect to come up smiling; be thankful if you come up at all.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
Friday, 2 September 2005
Devices and Desires
K.J. Parker
Orbit
ISBN: 1-84149-275-2
Ziani Vaatzes is an engineer, a maker of devices for the great Republic of Mezentia. When he builds a clockwork toy for his daughter, he creates something that exceeds the sacred specifications of Mezentine engineering and for that is sentenced to death. In escaping his fate, Vaatzes begins the construction of a mechanism that will lead to the death of thousands and destruction on a scale never before seen. Those around him are but parts of the machine, and it will be oiled with their blood before he is done.
Those familiar with Parker’s earlier work will know what to expect of ‘Devices and Desires’, but a newcomer to his writing will find this novel an off-beat, intricate slice of perfection. The characters are astounding; elegantly sculpted and wonderfully human, they are as flawed and limited as any being inside or out of fiction. Their strengths and weaknesses drive the narrative, granting the world they inhabit and the tale of their lives great authenticity. For once we have a fantasy novel where the characters exist for their own sake, rather than to further the plot. All of the set pieces, from battles to exquisite boar-hunts, exist to allow the reader better understanding of characters who aren’t simply reacting to the author’s well-crafted narrative - they are creating it themselves.
Whereas Parker’s earlier books have suffered on occasion from stretches where nothing seems to happen, in ‘Devices and Desires’ he has got the balance of action and characterisation just right. Yet to separate the two is misleading, because every scene somehow manages to become both exciting and insightful. Even the quietest, most introspective moment bears enough tension to keep from becoming dull.
While the novel is never less than absorbing, the strength of its characterisation also creates its only weakness. It seems even the most minor of players must be explained, fleshed out and made sympathetic to the reader, which means the focus is taken off the central characters for a handful of pages and these detours, entertaining and perceptive though they are, can seem like an indulgence.
A second side effect of such intensive characterisation is to strip ‘Devices and Desires’ of anything even remotely resembling a villain. While at first it seems as though the Mezentine Republic might be set to play that role, through shifting perspective to see the world through their eyes Parker gives them, too, the reader’s sympathy. It is a clever trick, refusing to provide a target deserving of destruction, and it makes the inevitable chaos and death all the more tragic. If only it could have been avoided, then all of these people (none of whom are paragons, but neither are they entirely to blame) could have continued in their selfish little lives.
It is that feeling of inevitability that lies at the heart of ‘Devices and Desires.’ It is a theme that can be found throughout, from Vaatzes’ insistence that his mechanism is out of his hands to a Mezentine official’s musings on cause and effect. Nobody, it seems, is truly free to make their own choices. Led by the environment and their own natures they battle for control of themselves and the world around them but even Vaatzes, so adept at making tools of those around him, sometimes seems little more than a helpless puppet.
Through his characters Parker expertly dissects the concept of free will, creating as he does a superb work of fiction that any reader can enjoy. To get the best from ‘Devices and Desires’ will require many readings, and I can only hope that the rest of the ‘Engineer’ trilogy can reach the same high standard. In the meantime this novel sits on the shelf marked ‘work of art’, its place well deserved.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
Orbit
ISBN: 1-84149-275-2
Ziani Vaatzes is an engineer, a maker of devices for the great Republic of Mezentia. When he builds a clockwork toy for his daughter, he creates something that exceeds the sacred specifications of Mezentine engineering and for that is sentenced to death. In escaping his fate, Vaatzes begins the construction of a mechanism that will lead to the death of thousands and destruction on a scale never before seen. Those around him are but parts of the machine, and it will be oiled with their blood before he is done.
Those familiar with Parker’s earlier work will know what to expect of ‘Devices and Desires’, but a newcomer to his writing will find this novel an off-beat, intricate slice of perfection. The characters are astounding; elegantly sculpted and wonderfully human, they are as flawed and limited as any being inside or out of fiction. Their strengths and weaknesses drive the narrative, granting the world they inhabit and the tale of their lives great authenticity. For once we have a fantasy novel where the characters exist for their own sake, rather than to further the plot. All of the set pieces, from battles to exquisite boar-hunts, exist to allow the reader better understanding of characters who aren’t simply reacting to the author’s well-crafted narrative - they are creating it themselves.
Whereas Parker’s earlier books have suffered on occasion from stretches where nothing seems to happen, in ‘Devices and Desires’ he has got the balance of action and characterisation just right. Yet to separate the two is misleading, because every scene somehow manages to become both exciting and insightful. Even the quietest, most introspective moment bears enough tension to keep from becoming dull.
While the novel is never less than absorbing, the strength of its characterisation also creates its only weakness. It seems even the most minor of players must be explained, fleshed out and made sympathetic to the reader, which means the focus is taken off the central characters for a handful of pages and these detours, entertaining and perceptive though they are, can seem like an indulgence.
A second side effect of such intensive characterisation is to strip ‘Devices and Desires’ of anything even remotely resembling a villain. While at first it seems as though the Mezentine Republic might be set to play that role, through shifting perspective to see the world through their eyes Parker gives them, too, the reader’s sympathy. It is a clever trick, refusing to provide a target deserving of destruction, and it makes the inevitable chaos and death all the more tragic. If only it could have been avoided, then all of these people (none of whom are paragons, but neither are they entirely to blame) could have continued in their selfish little lives.
It is that feeling of inevitability that lies at the heart of ‘Devices and Desires.’ It is a theme that can be found throughout, from Vaatzes’ insistence that his mechanism is out of his hands to a Mezentine official’s musings on cause and effect. Nobody, it seems, is truly free to make their own choices. Led by the environment and their own natures they battle for control of themselves and the world around them but even Vaatzes, so adept at making tools of those around him, sometimes seems little more than a helpless puppet.
Through his characters Parker expertly dissects the concept of free will, creating as he does a superb work of fiction that any reader can enjoy. To get the best from ‘Devices and Desires’ will require many readings, and I can only hope that the rest of the ‘Engineer’ trilogy can reach the same high standard. In the meantime this novel sits on the shelf marked ‘work of art’, its place well deserved.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
Wednesday, 1 June 2005
Pattern
K. J. Parker
Orbit Books
ISBN: 1-84149-182-9
Having resolved some small fraction of his identity crisis, Poldarn was last seen heading back across the waters with the savage Raiders, the people he was born to. Trawling the Empire for clues to his past have left him with a whole pile of confusing contradictions and more enemies than he can count, so returning home seems like the safe option. But when home is filled with folk whose memories work a good deal better than his; when home is an incomprehensible society where everyone knows their role and performs without question; why, then home isn’t home at all. Struggling to cope in a place he doesn’t remember but that remembers him, Poldarn finds himself wondering if his past should remain nothing more than a shadow…
Following on from a first book, the ending of which raised more questions than it answered, ‘Pattern’ continues in the same vein. The one section of Poldarn’s history that seemed to be clearing is suddenly complicated again by secrets and deception, while our amnesiac hero tries desperately to get to grips with a culture that seems utterly alien to him. And there is something very odd about the Raiders. Brutal and merciless killers when harrowing the Empire’s towns, in their home they become suddenly rather harmless and pastoral folk. Indeed, the vast majority of the novel is filled with the day-to-day business of the islanders’ farm communities and Poldarn’s hopeless attempts to fit in.
While Parker’s writing is engaging and witty, even Poldarn’s confusion and offbeat comments can’t keep farm life in all its tedium from dragging the pace to a screeching halt. The interactions between characters are nuanced and filled with portentous significance, but the constant barrage of symbolism and red herrings backfires slightly as the reader is forced to yield under the sheer weight of them. Whatever social commentary may have been intended – and it seems as though there is some deeper meaning intended by all this – is lost in the confusion. A shame, really, for just like its prequel this is a very clever book. Cleverer than me, at least.
When it is good, ‘Pattern’ is superb. The pace picks up towards the end as certain sneaking suspicions become more likely and the horrifying secrets of Poldarn’s past are revealed. The novel is overflowing with evocative phrases and vivid imagery, and does a good job of portraying Poldarn’s alienation among his own people. For those who enjoy being confused or have the intelligence to follow its myriad twists and turns, this will be a joy. Unlike so much fiction where the plot is depressingly predictable, it’s more than certain that this novel will keep the reader guessing to the end. It is one of ‘Pattern’s greatest strengths, but a great weakness too. Credibility is stretched just a little too far, the characters seemingly going out of their way to protect the author’s secrets.
Apart from those hoop-jumps deemed necessary for the plot’s fulfilment, the characters and their actions are realistic and all too human. While Poldarn himself remains a rather unsympathetic hero and strangely ambivalent to his own fate, the host of characters around him more than make up for this. Parker has created a world of people who act and think just like real humans do, with all their contradictions and absurdities artfully portrayed. In a way the vivid reality of even the supporting characters makes Poldarn, the supposed focus of our attention, rather bland by comparison. Despite the ever-deepening hole he finds himself in, it’s difficult to care. Confusion takes care of any lingering sympathy the reader might have for him, killing it stone dead.
For all its faults of pacing and overplayed metaphor, ‘Pattern’ is an intriguing and unique slice of fantasy. Those with the patience to struggle through the tedium of the earlier pages will unearth a tangled web of mystery where resolving one issue just ties knots in another. It’s frustrating but delightfully so, and I’d advise any reader who plans to fully understand ‘Pattern’s many threads to keep a notepad handy. One thing’s for sure: this is a book that will survive many readings, and each repetition will bring a little more clarity than the last. The only question is whether you’re willing to give ‘Pattern the attention it deserves. A place on my ‘conundrum wrapped in an enigma’ shelf awaits it, just as soon as I figure out that last nagging point…
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
Orbit Books
ISBN: 1-84149-182-9
Having resolved some small fraction of his identity crisis, Poldarn was last seen heading back across the waters with the savage Raiders, the people he was born to. Trawling the Empire for clues to his past have left him with a whole pile of confusing contradictions and more enemies than he can count, so returning home seems like the safe option. But when home is filled with folk whose memories work a good deal better than his; when home is an incomprehensible society where everyone knows their role and performs without question; why, then home isn’t home at all. Struggling to cope in a place he doesn’t remember but that remembers him, Poldarn finds himself wondering if his past should remain nothing more than a shadow…
Following on from a first book, the ending of which raised more questions than it answered, ‘Pattern’ continues in the same vein. The one section of Poldarn’s history that seemed to be clearing is suddenly complicated again by secrets and deception, while our amnesiac hero tries desperately to get to grips with a culture that seems utterly alien to him. And there is something very odd about the Raiders. Brutal and merciless killers when harrowing the Empire’s towns, in their home they become suddenly rather harmless and pastoral folk. Indeed, the vast majority of the novel is filled with the day-to-day business of the islanders’ farm communities and Poldarn’s hopeless attempts to fit in.
While Parker’s writing is engaging and witty, even Poldarn’s confusion and offbeat comments can’t keep farm life in all its tedium from dragging the pace to a screeching halt. The interactions between characters are nuanced and filled with portentous significance, but the constant barrage of symbolism and red herrings backfires slightly as the reader is forced to yield under the sheer weight of them. Whatever social commentary may have been intended – and it seems as though there is some deeper meaning intended by all this – is lost in the confusion. A shame, really, for just like its prequel this is a very clever book. Cleverer than me, at least.
When it is good, ‘Pattern’ is superb. The pace picks up towards the end as certain sneaking suspicions become more likely and the horrifying secrets of Poldarn’s past are revealed. The novel is overflowing with evocative phrases and vivid imagery, and does a good job of portraying Poldarn’s alienation among his own people. For those who enjoy being confused or have the intelligence to follow its myriad twists and turns, this will be a joy. Unlike so much fiction where the plot is depressingly predictable, it’s more than certain that this novel will keep the reader guessing to the end. It is one of ‘Pattern’s greatest strengths, but a great weakness too. Credibility is stretched just a little too far, the characters seemingly going out of their way to protect the author’s secrets.
Apart from those hoop-jumps deemed necessary for the plot’s fulfilment, the characters and their actions are realistic and all too human. While Poldarn himself remains a rather unsympathetic hero and strangely ambivalent to his own fate, the host of characters around him more than make up for this. Parker has created a world of people who act and think just like real humans do, with all their contradictions and absurdities artfully portrayed. In a way the vivid reality of even the supporting characters makes Poldarn, the supposed focus of our attention, rather bland by comparison. Despite the ever-deepening hole he finds himself in, it’s difficult to care. Confusion takes care of any lingering sympathy the reader might have for him, killing it stone dead.
For all its faults of pacing and overplayed metaphor, ‘Pattern’ is an intriguing and unique slice of fantasy. Those with the patience to struggle through the tedium of the earlier pages will unearth a tangled web of mystery where resolving one issue just ties knots in another. It’s frustrating but delightfully so, and I’d advise any reader who plans to fully understand ‘Pattern’s many threads to keep a notepad handy. One thing’s for sure: this is a book that will survive many readings, and each repetition will bring a little more clarity than the last. The only question is whether you’re willing to give ‘Pattern the attention it deserves. A place on my ‘conundrum wrapped in an enigma’ shelf awaits it, just as soon as I figure out that last nagging point…
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
Memory
K. J. Parker
Orbit Books
ISBN: 1-84149-172-1
Having fled the Empire for the island he grew up on, the amnesiac Poldarn had hoped to find some peace among his people. It was not to be, his past catching up with him most unpleasantly, and after spreading death, destruction and misery to his family and childhood friends Poldarn returns to the mainland.
No longer interested in discovering the truth of his identity, all he wants now is to find some quiet corner of the world where he can live out his days and die without causing any more pain. But havoc seems to follow Poldarn around like a dog tailing its master, and the quiet foundry where he finds himself shaping bells is about to become the centre of a conflict between the faltering Empire and the fanatical followers of the Mad Monk.
With old enemies on both sides and too many people remembering him as a major player, he can do little to avoid the repercussions of his forgotten acts. As the pieces begin to fall into place and the truth is finally revealed, all Poldarn can do is trust nobody and pray he’ll make it through.
With some small mysteries cleared up at the end of this trilogy’s second book, ‘Memory’ is nonetheless left with a veritable shoal of enigmas to explain. Parker has done a remarkable job of keeping the reader guessing as to Poldarn’s true identity, hints falling like raindrops throughout the series. Such is the bewildering complexity of the narrative that at several points it seems Poldarn could have been almost every character in the trilogy, even some of the ones he has personally met since his memory was lost!
Yet despite this twisted mix of betrayals and red herrings, mysteries and misery, ‘Memory’ retains its plausibility. The supernatural aspect of Poldarn’s past that had such importance in the first book is present here again, a barrage of hints as to Poldarn’s divinity seeming to speak most ominously of some feeble deus ex machina to come. Thankfully that disappointment is avoided, and though the final revelation stretches coincidence to breaking point it is nonetheless both probable and satisfying, hindsight and re-reading allowing the reader to spot enough foreshadowing among the misdirection that the concluding twists never seem unnatural.
Unlike in the first two books, ‘Memory’ suffers occasionally from a decline in the quality of the dialogue towards the end of the novel exposition begins to take over, the natural and flowing speech that Parker excels at vanishing into a fog of revelatory monologues. It is a small flaw, however, one made necessary by the concluding nature of the book, and the answers exposed within such speeches more than make up for any small loss of authenticity. Regardless, Parker’s dialogue is for most of the book as snappy and natural as ever. Together with the unusual perspective the author projects onto everyday occurrences, this gives ‘Memory’ a slick and enjoyable style that seems curiously at odds with its often-disturbing content.
For this is certainly no children’s book. I don’t mean that it is filled with excessively graphic depictions of violence or contains steamy sex scenes – rather that the themes and actions of the characters can be deeply unpleasant. There are no heroes within K.J. Parker’s trilogy, least of all Poldarn himself. Like the author’s other books, ‘Memory’ is populated by characters whose attempts to do the right thing often create terrible tragedies and force them into monstrous deeds. Poldarn’s lost memories are filled with horrors both psychological and societal, but it is a tribute to Parker’s characterisation that the reader doesn’t lose their sympathy for the characters involved. If anything such sympathies are strengthened, as one can see just what would force people to such desperate and terrible feats.
If ‘Memory’ has one real fault, it lies in the first half of the book. Too long is spent building up the tension with seemingly innocuous events, too much emphasis placed on the minutiae of Poldarn’s work at the foundry. The author’s biography mentions a history of craftsmanship and it’s reasonable that such intimate knowledge be used to grant his writing authenticity. What isn’t reasonable is to burden one’s reader with the mundane, however it conveys Poldarn’s achievement in finding a boring little corner of the world to hide in. Such a desire for realism is laudable, but in this case it detracts from the flow of the story towards its terrible climax.
In conclusion, ‘Memory’ is the best of the Scavenger Trilogy and a fine book in its own right. Those struggling with the exceedingly complex first and second books should be reassured – it’s all worth it in the end. Clever, evocative and enjoyable, ‘Memory’ is apart from the occasional niggling flaw a lesson in how to write the third act of any story. It has a place of honour on my ‘how to do endings right’ shelf, and is good enough to make me seek out any of its author’s work I may have missed. Intelligent mysteries are so hard to find these days, but Parker’s work is one of the best.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
Orbit Books
ISBN: 1-84149-172-1
Having fled the Empire for the island he grew up on, the amnesiac Poldarn had hoped to find some peace among his people. It was not to be, his past catching up with him most unpleasantly, and after spreading death, destruction and misery to his family and childhood friends Poldarn returns to the mainland.
No longer interested in discovering the truth of his identity, all he wants now is to find some quiet corner of the world where he can live out his days and die without causing any more pain. But havoc seems to follow Poldarn around like a dog tailing its master, and the quiet foundry where he finds himself shaping bells is about to become the centre of a conflict between the faltering Empire and the fanatical followers of the Mad Monk.
With old enemies on both sides and too many people remembering him as a major player, he can do little to avoid the repercussions of his forgotten acts. As the pieces begin to fall into place and the truth is finally revealed, all Poldarn can do is trust nobody and pray he’ll make it through.
With some small mysteries cleared up at the end of this trilogy’s second book, ‘Memory’ is nonetheless left with a veritable shoal of enigmas to explain. Parker has done a remarkable job of keeping the reader guessing as to Poldarn’s true identity, hints falling like raindrops throughout the series. Such is the bewildering complexity of the narrative that at several points it seems Poldarn could have been almost every character in the trilogy, even some of the ones he has personally met since his memory was lost!
Yet despite this twisted mix of betrayals and red herrings, mysteries and misery, ‘Memory’ retains its plausibility. The supernatural aspect of Poldarn’s past that had such importance in the first book is present here again, a barrage of hints as to Poldarn’s divinity seeming to speak most ominously of some feeble deus ex machina to come. Thankfully that disappointment is avoided, and though the final revelation stretches coincidence to breaking point it is nonetheless both probable and satisfying, hindsight and re-reading allowing the reader to spot enough foreshadowing among the misdirection that the concluding twists never seem unnatural.
Unlike in the first two books, ‘Memory’ suffers occasionally from a decline in the quality of the dialogue towards the end of the novel exposition begins to take over, the natural and flowing speech that Parker excels at vanishing into a fog of revelatory monologues. It is a small flaw, however, one made necessary by the concluding nature of the book, and the answers exposed within such speeches more than make up for any small loss of authenticity. Regardless, Parker’s dialogue is for most of the book as snappy and natural as ever. Together with the unusual perspective the author projects onto everyday occurrences, this gives ‘Memory’ a slick and enjoyable style that seems curiously at odds with its often-disturbing content.
For this is certainly no children’s book. I don’t mean that it is filled with excessively graphic depictions of violence or contains steamy sex scenes – rather that the themes and actions of the characters can be deeply unpleasant. There are no heroes within K.J. Parker’s trilogy, least of all Poldarn himself. Like the author’s other books, ‘Memory’ is populated by characters whose attempts to do the right thing often create terrible tragedies and force them into monstrous deeds. Poldarn’s lost memories are filled with horrors both psychological and societal, but it is a tribute to Parker’s characterisation that the reader doesn’t lose their sympathy for the characters involved. If anything such sympathies are strengthened, as one can see just what would force people to such desperate and terrible feats.
If ‘Memory’ has one real fault, it lies in the first half of the book. Too long is spent building up the tension with seemingly innocuous events, too much emphasis placed on the minutiae of Poldarn’s work at the foundry. The author’s biography mentions a history of craftsmanship and it’s reasonable that such intimate knowledge be used to grant his writing authenticity. What isn’t reasonable is to burden one’s reader with the mundane, however it conveys Poldarn’s achievement in finding a boring little corner of the world to hide in. Such a desire for realism is laudable, but in this case it detracts from the flow of the story towards its terrible climax.
In conclusion, ‘Memory’ is the best of the Scavenger Trilogy and a fine book in its own right. Those struggling with the exceedingly complex first and second books should be reassured – it’s all worth it in the end. Clever, evocative and enjoyable, ‘Memory’ is apart from the occasional niggling flaw a lesson in how to write the third act of any story. It has a place of honour on my ‘how to do endings right’ shelf, and is good enough to make me seek out any of its author’s work I may have missed. Intelligent mysteries are so hard to find these days, but Parker’s work is one of the best.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
Saturday, 2 April 2005
Shadow
K. J. Parker
Orbit Books
ISBN: 1-84149-105-5
In the north of the Empire a man awakes. Around him lie the remains of a battle, dead soldiers of both sides scattered across the muddy floor of a river valley and crows fluttering eagerly overhead. Which side he was on, he can’t remember – in fact, he can’t remember anything. Who he is, how he got here, just where ‘here’ actually is… nothing. Seems to be pretty good with a sword, though.
Forgetting your past could get a man in a lot of trouble, especially when your past seems determined to seek you out and wrap you up in a whole complicated web of treachery and politics. Everything our hero learns about himself just seems to bring him more strife, and wandering the countryside in a rickety cart masquerading as the God of the Apocalypse certainly isn’t helping.
When too many sides in a conflict recognise you as one of their own, everything gets very confusing. Who to trust? The confidence trickster who uses the god-in-the-cart routine to scam villages for food? The politician with his eye on the Emperor’s throne? Or the voices in your head, telling you the ‘god’ swindle might not just be an act? Maybe it’d just be easier to abandon the man he was and start again anew. If only he could find a little corner of the world where trouble didn’t follow…
In a just world, K.J. Parker’s ‘Shadow’ would come with a large warning across the front cover, bold red letters informing the casual browser to steer well clear. Not that it’s unreadable, not by any means – Parker’s prose is light and breezy, agonisingly nonchalant and a dream to read. No, the problem lies with the reader’s attention span, their ability to concentrate whatever intellect they may possess on the tale within. For should you dare to leave ‘Shadow’ unread for a day or two you’ll find yourself hopelessly entangled in a lasso of half-remembered plot twists or trapped along with a whole shoal of red herrings.
In these pages nothing happens by accident, every chance encounter is significant – or at least it tries to make you think it is. Parker weaves a plot of breathtaking, mind-numbing, incomprehensible complexity; unless it has your full attention you are bound to miss something vital.
Forget trying to guess the ending, even if you’re good at that sort of thing. So many dead-ends and false trails are laid in this novel that it must be hard for the author himself to figure out what’s happening, never mind the reader. Such unpredictability is refreshing but to reach such dizzy heights without sacrificing the narrative’s plausibility and consistency is something very special indeed.
If ‘Shadow’ has one fault, it is that our hero’s lack of memory leaves him without direction and, fatally at times, without any real drive. Perhaps it is a deliberate act on the author’s part, but Poldarn (the name our hero ends up using, to avoid excessive and imprecise overuse of ‘he’ if for no other reason) seems very much an observer, separated from the world around him. It’s difficult to empathise with someone like that, the choices he makes difficult to predict and harder to understand. It all fits in with our hero’s blank-slate nature of course, but it makes him a troublesome protagonist.
As mentioned before, ‘Shadow’ is written in such a way that it is – despite all manner of confusion – blissfully easy to read. Parker has a way with words, a certain unconventional way of looking at things that makes him stand out from the crowd. It also strikes a chord with any reader whose mind has occasionally betrayed them, and we’ve all been there. If anything the author goes a little too far, the quirky running commentary inside Poldarn’s head detracting from scenes where a little more emphasis on the serious side of things might have added emotional weight. It’s a fine portrayal of the human brain’s tendency to shy away from danger, but it’s a trick that is overused.
Despite an unlikeable protagonist and a plot that’ll pull your brain out through your ears and knot it under your chin, ‘Shadow’ is a fantastic piece of work. Original, unique and thought-provoking, it ends with a revelation that asks more questions than it answers Anybody who reads this and doesn’t want to read the sequel immediately hasn’t been paying enough attention. It’s entertaining and intelligent, a book that has to be read a half-dozen times before it begins to make much sense. Some people would find that frustrating: I find it delightful. ‘Shadow’ now sits happily on my ‘aspirin included free of charge’ shelf, just waiting for the next time I feel like letting my mind out of its cage.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
Orbit Books
ISBN: 1-84149-105-5
In the north of the Empire a man awakes. Around him lie the remains of a battle, dead soldiers of both sides scattered across the muddy floor of a river valley and crows fluttering eagerly overhead. Which side he was on, he can’t remember – in fact, he can’t remember anything. Who he is, how he got here, just where ‘here’ actually is… nothing. Seems to be pretty good with a sword, though.
Forgetting your past could get a man in a lot of trouble, especially when your past seems determined to seek you out and wrap you up in a whole complicated web of treachery and politics. Everything our hero learns about himself just seems to bring him more strife, and wandering the countryside in a rickety cart masquerading as the God of the Apocalypse certainly isn’t helping.
When too many sides in a conflict recognise you as one of their own, everything gets very confusing. Who to trust? The confidence trickster who uses the god-in-the-cart routine to scam villages for food? The politician with his eye on the Emperor’s throne? Or the voices in your head, telling you the ‘god’ swindle might not just be an act? Maybe it’d just be easier to abandon the man he was and start again anew. If only he could find a little corner of the world where trouble didn’t follow…
In a just world, K.J. Parker’s ‘Shadow’ would come with a large warning across the front cover, bold red letters informing the casual browser to steer well clear. Not that it’s unreadable, not by any means – Parker’s prose is light and breezy, agonisingly nonchalant and a dream to read. No, the problem lies with the reader’s attention span, their ability to concentrate whatever intellect they may possess on the tale within. For should you dare to leave ‘Shadow’ unread for a day or two you’ll find yourself hopelessly entangled in a lasso of half-remembered plot twists or trapped along with a whole shoal of red herrings.
In these pages nothing happens by accident, every chance encounter is significant – or at least it tries to make you think it is. Parker weaves a plot of breathtaking, mind-numbing, incomprehensible complexity; unless it has your full attention you are bound to miss something vital.
Forget trying to guess the ending, even if you’re good at that sort of thing. So many dead-ends and false trails are laid in this novel that it must be hard for the author himself to figure out what’s happening, never mind the reader. Such unpredictability is refreshing but to reach such dizzy heights without sacrificing the narrative’s plausibility and consistency is something very special indeed.
If ‘Shadow’ has one fault, it is that our hero’s lack of memory leaves him without direction and, fatally at times, without any real drive. Perhaps it is a deliberate act on the author’s part, but Poldarn (the name our hero ends up using, to avoid excessive and imprecise overuse of ‘he’ if for no other reason) seems very much an observer, separated from the world around him. It’s difficult to empathise with someone like that, the choices he makes difficult to predict and harder to understand. It all fits in with our hero’s blank-slate nature of course, but it makes him a troublesome protagonist.
As mentioned before, ‘Shadow’ is written in such a way that it is – despite all manner of confusion – blissfully easy to read. Parker has a way with words, a certain unconventional way of looking at things that makes him stand out from the crowd. It also strikes a chord with any reader whose mind has occasionally betrayed them, and we’ve all been there. If anything the author goes a little too far, the quirky running commentary inside Poldarn’s head detracting from scenes where a little more emphasis on the serious side of things might have added emotional weight. It’s a fine portrayal of the human brain’s tendency to shy away from danger, but it’s a trick that is overused.
Despite an unlikeable protagonist and a plot that’ll pull your brain out through your ears and knot it under your chin, ‘Shadow’ is a fantastic piece of work. Original, unique and thought-provoking, it ends with a revelation that asks more questions than it answers Anybody who reads this and doesn’t want to read the sequel immediately hasn’t been paying enough attention. It’s entertaining and intelligent, a book that has to be read a half-dozen times before it begins to make much sense. Some people would find that frustrating: I find it delightful. ‘Shadow’ now sits happily on my ‘aspirin included free of charge’ shelf, just waiting for the next time I feel like letting my mind out of its cage.
This review was originally written for SFcrowsnest.com
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